Law & Disorder —

Do we need a new National Broadband Plan?

FCC rolls out new rural "Connect America Fund," but bigger changes are needed.

Google may be rolling out 1Gbps Internet access to Kansas City, but there are about 19 million American households and businesses that still lack any access to broadband, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Most of them are in rural areas, and some will soon benefit from broadband projects financed by one of the last pillars of the FCC's National Broadband Plan: the Connect America Fund.

"I'm pleased to announce today that nearly 400,000 residents and businesses in rural communities who currently lack access to high-speed Internet will gain access within the next three years," declared FCC Chair Julius Genachowski on Thursday.

This first phase of the program will invest about $115 million of public money for private broadband projects in 37 states. Carriers are also bringing their own money, of course. They include ACS (Alaska), CenturyLink, Consolidated Communications, Fairpoint, Frontier, Hawaiian Telcom, and Windstream. "Of these, Frontier took almost $72 million and Century $35 million," an FCC spokesperson told us.

Enlarge/ States receiving Connect America Phase 1 support are in color. You can browse the FCC's map if you wish.

FCC

CAF draws its money from the FCC's Universal Service Fund, which tithes phone consumer phone bills to subsidize rural and low-income phone service. Connect America, however, is designed to (hopefully) finance rural broadband service without incurring the famous inefficiencies and corruptions associated with the USF's ironically named "high cost" fund. The term was supposed to signify helping carriers in low density regions where broadband delivery is expensive. But the program subsidized companies without adequate auditing or even a proper assessment of whether the service could be provided by the market.

The old system, for example, paid multiple companies to provide service to the same areas, such as a region of Mississippi where, in 2009, no less than 13 carriers all received "high cost" cash.

Thus, Connect America recipients can only receive Uncle Sam's money in regions where "there is no private sector business case to provide broadband and high-quality voice-grade service," as the National Broadband Plan put it. The fund can assist only one provider per geographic area. And all broadband network technologies should be eligible for support (which may mean satellite service in some areas).

These first Connect-assisted projects must roll out their networks in three years. The FCC wants all 19 million rural households and businesses reached by 2020. "Today's action is just the beginning of our efforts to unleash the benefits of broadband for millions of homes and small businesses in unserved rural communities across the US," Genachowski promised.

A big fact

Interestingly, this development comes as the author of the FCC's National Broadband Plan is rethinking broadband development. Following the completion of the plan, Blair Levin packed his bags and relocated to the Aspen Institute, then became executive director of Gig. U.—a consortium of research universities rolling out high speed networks on their campuses. In May, Gig. U. announced plans to build "an ultra-high-speed, Gigabit Main Street Internet Network" around the University of Maine's Old Town and Orono areas.

The consortium has almost 40 member campuses, including the University of Chicago and California Institute of Technology. A month later, Levin spoke at a conference in San Jose, California. "Here's a big fact," he declared. "For the first time since the beginning of the commercial Internet, the United States does not have a national wireline provider with plans to build a better network than the currently best available network."

This is not news to us. In late May, Ars's Timothy Lee outlined four signs that the US's national broadband policy is failing, among them Verizon's announcement that it would put the kibosh on fiber-to-the-premises rollouts, "without reaching some of its most important markets, including Baltimore, downtown Boston, and my own apartment in Philadelphia."

The regional Bell operating companies don't seem to be in a rush to pick up the slack, either—fiberwise. "Instead of an arms race between telephone and cable incumbents, we seem to be getting a truce," Lee noted.

But it's an ominous sign, Levin suggested. It means that there's no fire under the feet of the cable industry to go to the next level (instead, Verizon and Comcast are negotiating spectrum deals, speaking of truces). And that means that for most Americans, "five years from now, the best network they have is the network they have today."

It's true that there's still a lot of innovation in wireless, but "looking down the road, only wireline can provide the excessive bandwidth that provides the platform for creating the next generation of big bandwidth services," he added.

So the big question isn't just about rollouts, it's about upgrades.

Bandwidth psychology

"When it comes to the wireline access network, instead of talking about upgrades, we are talking about caps and tiers," Levin warned. "The government should not attempt to micromanage the packaging or pricing of a service. But those in policy positions should understand this: a country that is talking about an upgrade, and not caps, will be better off in a few years; a country that is talking about caps, and not upgrades, will not be better off in a few years, and likely will be worse off." The speech then framed the choices for future policy makers:

So today, we can spend billions of dollars connecting rural America to baseline broadband by building on top of old technology, or we can figure out an upgrade strategy using new technology to bring far bigger broadband at far lower prices. We can spend billions trying to get everyone on a network, or we can create upgrade options for low-income individuals through the utilization of untapped resources in the existing network [and] can bring a compelling value such that market forces do most of the trick. We can, like Korea, mandate spending billions to upgrade everywhere to drive more effective use of the network, or we can upgrade in those places [that] we know... create the kinds of improvements that scale everywhere and create new market forces that incent the private sector to invest in a broader upgrade.

We spoke with Levin for a few minutes on Thursday. He acknowledged that rural broadband rollouts and network upgrades are separate tasks. But the latter challenge generates a higher payoff for the economy as a whole, he emphasized.

How is the US supposed to get to this place? "I hope next year, the president of the United States tells the chair of the FCC that his or her mission is to deliver a strategic bandwidth advantage for the country and a psychology of bandwidth abundance for consumers," Levin's talk concluded.

Lots of wild cards here, such as who will be president next year, and consequently, who will chair the FCC. But Levin's commentary reflects a growing consensus that US broadband policy has stalled, and a restart will require more than the completion of one of the National Broadband Plan's last action items.

Promoted Comments

19m without broadband. 400K will get it "within 3 years"? That is NOT a plan. That is a travasty. This means anyone living in those areas is essentialyl incapable of being brought up properly thrgouh the moden school system withot having to arrange for significant portions of their time to be spent on school property or at other public internet locations instead of at home where they should be. This places numerous businesses in positions of being unable to cepete with neighboring towns, and having no access to certain now-considered essential business services. It means many families can;t even reliably pay bills online or manage accounts (over dial up, my banks own web site takes approx 5 minutes to load just to be abole to log in, due the heavy use of advertizing and hiogh resolution images).

3 years to connect about 5% of those still waiting is not a plan. This is the very prof that we DO need a plan, an actionable one. in 5 years, there should not be a household in america wirthout access to broadband of some kind (with a minimum defined up and downspeed capable of supporting multiple users, and low resolution video streams).

use the USF money to fund one provider per area to build out, but also mandate that 3 years after rollout, the lines have to be deregulated. Give out tons of money. If noone takes it, the local municipality will be expected to build one out on their own (and if not, the federal government itself will build it out). One way or the other, carreirs will be guaranteed to have competition, best it be other commercial entities and not a government that has no requirement for profit, and he who is first to build gets 3 years of exclusivity as a prize before the pipes are opened up. If that's not good enough, the FCC will be comissinoingh instead massive government deployments of dump pipes open to all anyway.

Telephone is deregulated, DIAL UP is deregulated, why the hell isn't cable and internet??? Threaten them with that if they don't jump, and you'll have to walk carefully on roads for fear of being run down by the bustle of telco trucks speeding to their next deployment.

We also need to repeal/stop laws that ban locally owned fiber solutions (looking at you, NC and SC!)

+ 1000 internets!

I want to go a step further. Not only prevent such laws, but actually have the FCC itself threaten to build out a national broadband infrastructure OF IT"S OWN, if they don;y build out to rual areas on their own faster. Give them the money, and a 3 years exclusivity clause if they can build out faster than the local mubnicipality can plan one. then at the end of 3 years, they deregulate the pipes either way.

They can compete with open dumb pipes buyit by government money and run without intent of profitiability now, or they can have government money to build out themselves and rake in profits for 3 years before being forced to let their competition (but NOT the government) in.

Thus, the only way to keep from competing with the government directly will be to cave to dumb pipes and speed vs usage billing models.

This is EXACTLY the reason insurance companies were in the end in support of Obamacare. The governement bought their support by taking government run insurance off the table. Buy Telco support by taking governemt run telcos off the table. Simple.

Out here in West Virginia, Frontier is our only option in many areas. Consumers and businesses suffer in terms of cost, speed, and reliability. I have experienced this firsthand both as a residential and business customer.

Government programs are important for getting at least a minimum tier of services to the populace at large but if government was a business, they’d try to deploy services with the purpose of expanding the tax base so they get their money back (a revolving fund of sorts) – and in my mind that means providing better options for business.

One idea for prioritizing deployments and matching public and private dollars would be to take a Kickstarter-like approach. I’d be willing to put a few hundred bucks in escrow for a limited term, say 6 months to see if my neighbors (consumers + businesses) were also of the same mindset to fund fiber deployment in my area (or any utility-like service).

I’d prefer if a new entity to do this as it could add a competitor to the mix or perhaps it could be a "dumb pipe" deployment. That said, it takes capacity, technical chops, and the ability to navigate through government red tape so I’d be willing to compromise and support the incumbent as long as there were date-certain deliverables with penalties for late deployment. To sweeten the pot, the government could prioritize some of its limited subsides to those communities willing to put in their own money.

After build out is completed, the escrow money plus some additional service credit would used to pay back the early “investors.”

By prioritizing fiberhood buildout based on pre-registrant demand, Google is using a market-driven approach to determine where to deploy fiber in Kansas City. I’m suggesting a similar idea where any provider could access capital to get started and which also builds where there is already likely and sufficient demand rather than targeting new areas.

If communities want to be considered as employment centers for high-tech industries, many service-sector jobs, or advanced manufacturing– the internet needs to be considered an essential utility. Without essential services, economic growth is near impossible. In this day and age of limited government funding, the people in a community could be recruited to fund what they want directly rather than through taxes, loans, or other large federal subsidies.

Why does it make sense for several companies to roll lines down the same street, and at the same time ignore places that they consider "not profitable"?

The US should roll out a national broadband network, similar to Australia's. Government-owned pipes going everywhere and available to all telecoms companies on the same basis.

Seriously, how can anyone imagine that private enterprise is the best way to achieve anything given the examples shown by banks, telecoms companies, software manufacturers, music distributors etc.?

The only people to benefit from small government are the rich, who suddenly find it much easier to get what they want and screw everyone else. Oops, off-topic. (Let's see the complaints about "communism" come out of the woodwork).

If anyone wants to understand why there's a problem with ISP's and retarded development of new and/or upgraded networks, they need only look as far as the lobbyists that shield the ISP's against competition showing up and raining on their parade.

Verizon decided to stop fighting the system and trade away wire for wireless because they know that someday, perhaps a few decades from now, wireless will be more prevalent than wired. That's just inevitable. At some point, it will happen. As an extreme long term gamble, it's not a risky one. In the meantime, they get to further their advantage over their competitors and all they do is trade a modestly profitable field that is already painful to work in that isn't even their priority.

The way ISP's are set up, they were set up to compete against one another when there was the Telco vs Cable wars of old. Those wars are done. Cable won. A huge percentage of Americans is provided internet access by Time Warner, Comcast, or Cox. Unless they're on their iPhone and away from home. The current system is broken. The lobbyists will fight to keep that system broken for as long and as hard as they possibly can for no reason other than sheer greed.

And the worst part is the article is correct. The more these constrained networks are used to offer more bandwidth, the more these few ISP's will argue they need caps in order to ensure everyone has "equal access." In this, they remind me of Republicans. They break the system, then they complain that the system is broken, and argue that you need to further limit things in order to fix the system by breaking it further and then need even more limits. Each time a limit comes, it costs MORE money, but that cost is doled out to the consumer who is told they can't help it, it must be done. Each time, behind the scenes, the ISP laughs and takes the profit, not upgrading or building out their network, just pockets it.

Eventually, the network is overtaxed, but the ISP's being few, they shrug and say they can't be expected to fix the whole network themselves after a decade or so of neglecting it due to lack of competition (through legislative and lawsuit-oriented pressure), so no doubt we'll wind up with our government having to foot the bill to expand the networks.

Any time someone shows up to threaten that system, they take that pocketed profit and use it to grease palms in Washington to kill that threat with legislation and continue the spiraling cycle of higher prices, lower and lower caps, and modest speed gains.

If you wonder why Big Business seems to be divided over whether they want Big Fed (Democrats) or Big States (Republican, the so-called "Little governance"), you know now. The reason is a polarized, paralyzed government makes no laws, passes no legislation, and in the end cannot effectively reign in Big Business in any way. Far from being enemies, Fox News and MSNBC are like rappers that fake a rivalry to drive up business. In this case, however, they are just driving up legislative paralysis to give their respective parents (News Corp, Comcast, respectively) lots and lots of wiggle room.

It's ingenious, really. You really have to give it to the guys turning the gears in the background. They really used the limitations of our system of government to screw us over. The really, really rich guys don't care if Republicans win. All they care is if no one group gets enough of a majority to really change things.

If and when that threatens to happen, said group will be paralyzed by the lobbyists. This happened with the so-called "Blue Dog" democrats in the post-2008 field when the Democrats controlled two branches of the government. It'll happen again if either party seizes similar control this year. There's just too much money flowing from lobbyists for their influence to be underestimated.

If you want to fix most any problem in Washington, the first step is always going to be, "Make lobbying illegal. Kill all the lobbyists." I suggest Predator drone strikes. No warning, either. You don't want them to have time to start lobbying about it.

266 posts | registered Oct 22, 2009

Matthew Lasar
Matt writes for Ars Technica about media/technology history, intellectual property, the FCC, or the Internet in general. He teaches United States history and politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Emailmatthew.lasar@arstechnica.com//Twitter@matthewlasar

79 Reader Comments

More than a Broadband Plan we need real competition so that Comcast, Time Warner and other cable giants who get to monopolize virtually every market they play in (just different markets from each other so no one can cry "monopoly!") can't rape customers by jacking up their rates for the same substandard service every year, and entice new users with very low rates that never stick and are never offered to long-time customers.

We should let Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner and every other big cable / non-DSL broadband provide have equal access to infrastructure in every major market (Chicago, Philly, everywhere). The first result will be they will collude on price fixing at the same ridiculous levels, at which point we can trounce them with a class-action suit and force lower rates. Might take 10 years but waiting for things to evolve "organically" so that everyone gets fair prices and broadband will take 20 or 30.

Add $5/month access tax that goes into a universal fund.Allow companies to draw on said fund to build out architecture to areas in need.Give municipalities priority access to funds for buildout and lawsuits vs incumbent suppliers that aren't supplying.Profit?

The writing has been on the wall since Verizon broke promises and bailed on NH, ME and VT. The only option is clear, and it's not to let our local phone monopoly duke it out with our local cable monopoly.

You want to embrace nature, be at one with nature, anti foie gras and concentrate on your arts and spirituality thus living 200 miles from a postal office and you want people to lay that much cable to your door step so that you may or may not use their service?

The problem with existing policy is assuming that the ISPs with declare "thermonuclear war" on each other, initiating a "race to the bottom"

It isn't realistic to expect that it will happen, after all, who in their right minds would want to slowly kill themselves?

So in reality, the ISPs all take a piece of "territory" each, and leave each other alone

Hm...Sounds like Dune II on the good ol' PC/Genesis, but with broadband instead of spice.....And.....consumers instead of soldiers....?

Anyway, yeah, this is probably not going to happen in any way that benefits the consumer, unless the Government does something about it. What? I have no idea, there might be blue laws preventing anything being done on the consumer level, which sucks.

I don't understand why the internet doesn't have the same priority as other critical infrastructures, e.g. roads, electric, etc, and services, police, fire. It is just as vital to day to day business as those items. Letting regional monopolies strangle the growth of the internet only harms local business. This isn't even considering the social benefits to the populace at large.

Without good solid access to the internet, a significant number of companies would simply go under, esp. in rural areas.

Not that I support blindly throwing money at 13 carriers like in the Mississippi example, but this quote below sounds like they are encouraging service monopolies.

Quote:

Thus, Connect America recipients can only receive Uncle Sam's money in regions where "there is no private sector business case to provide broadband and high-quality voice-grade service," as the National Broadband Plan put it. The fund can assist only one provider per geographic area. And all broadband network technologies should be eligible for support (which may mean satellite service in some areas).

You want to embrace nature, be at one with nature, anti foie gras and concentrate on your arts and spirituality thus living 200 miles from a postal office and you want people to lay that much cable to your door step so that you may or may not use their service?

good luck

Are you implying that those who live in rural areas do so only because it's some sort of vacation?

I used to live in a rural area with zero broadband. While there are some city folk that build fancy looking houses down long, wooded driveways, the majority of the people living out there are not that kind of person.

Living for years with dial-up while all my friends in town had cable was brutal. And that was before there was such a growing reliance on the internet for things like banking, schoolwork, general communication, etc. I'd hate to see the state of things now. Imagine trying to Skype on a dial-up connection. *shiver*

So long as Comcast, Time Warner, and other cable giants lobby Congress (and pack hearings, as Comcast did) against a broadband plan (i.e., against a lower-priced alternative) and so long as they are able to persuade local governments to bar competitive service installation (is Comcast the only available service in YOUR neighborhood?), a national broadband is very unlikely.

So long as Comcast, Time Warner, and other cable giants lobby Congress (and pack hearings, as Comcast did) against a broadband plan (i.e., against a lower-priced alternative) and so long as they are able to persuade local governments to bar competitive service installation (is Comcast the only available service in YOUR neighborhood?), a national broadband is very unlikely.

The major reason we do not see more competition is because the govt more or less granted monopolies to these providers. This was done years ago with good intentions to encourage build-out of cable infrastructure. That worked well at the time but now its turned and biting us all in the ass. This is why local govts that wish to install their own service have such a hard time.

So, now even in well populated aeas most people at best have a choice between the local cable-based ISP or the local (crappy) DSL wireline service.

Of course all knowledgeable Internet users want 'dumb pipes', but that's like wishing for YouTube without ads or freeways without 'Adopt A Highway' signs. Pandora's box has already been opened and any national ISP is going to view their infrastructure as a means to nickel and dime (more like ten and twenty) their customers in any way they can. To think otherwise is simply naive.

As for regional ISPs, they still have to transit over the nationals and abide by their interconnect agreements. Don't think for one minute that those agreements are favorable to the end-customer, and they'll only get worse as time goes on.

Sorry, but Dumb Pipes is a quaint topic for dreamy-eyed nostalgia, but nothing to do with today's realities.

Living for years with dial-up while all my friends in town had cable was brutal. And that was before there was such a growing reliance on the internet for things like banking, schoolwork, general communication, etc. I'd hate to see the state of things now. Imagine trying to Skype on a dial-up connection. *shiver*

You talking about voice? Or video? Voice over dialup was actually surprisingly* decent back in the day. Good way to get free long distance, before cell phones made area codes obsolete.

* - Shouldn't actually be surprising, considering that same bandwidth was already being used to transmit voice.

Living for years with dial-up while all my friends in town had cable was brutal. And that was before there was such a growing reliance on the internet for things like banking, schoolwork, general communication, etc. I'd hate to see the state of things now. Imagine trying to Skype on a dial-up connection. *shiver*

You talking about voice? Or video? Voice over dialup was actually surprisingly* decent back in the day. Good way to get free long distance, before cell phones made area codes obsolete.

* - Shouldn't actually be surprising, considering that same bandwidth was already being used to transmit voice.

Sorry, but Dumb Pipes is a quaint topic for dreamy-eyed nostalgia, but nothing to do with today's realities.

Doesn't have to be quaint and dreamy eyed nostalgia. Can be the near tomorrow, with political will. Enable towns and communities to lay their own fiber, set guidelines and best practices, could be done the same as was done with community electricity, water, roads, sewers .... you could just dream or you could do something about it. You should get angry.

Of course all knowledgeable Internet users want 'dumb pipes', but that's like wishing for YouTube without ads or freeways without 'Adopt A Highway' signs. Pandora's box has already been opened and any national ISP is going to view their infrastructure as a means to nickel and dime (more like ten and twenty) their customers in any way they can. To think otherwise is simply naive.

As for regional ISPs, they still have to transit over the nationals and abide by their interconnect agreements. Don't think for one minute that those agreements are favorable to the end-customer, and they'll only get worse as time goes on.

Sorry, but Dumb Pipes is a quaint topic for dreamy-eyed nostalgia, but nothing to do with today's realities.

Sorry, but Dumb Pipes is a quaint topic for dreamy-eyed nostalgia, but nothing to do with today's realities.

Doesn't have to be quaint and dreamy eyed nostalgia. Can be the near tomorrow, with political will. Enable towns and communities to lay their own fiber, set guidelines and best practices, could be done the same as was done with community electricity, water, roads, sewers .... you could just dream or you could do something about it. You should get angry.

Agreed, pressure can easily be applied via new requirements on the usage of public and land and public funds necessary to roll out new infrastructure.

I just hope Google starts expanding their service into more cities. The price and speed they offer is a much better deal than what I can get now from Time Warner. Actually it might be enough for them to occasionally announce cities that they're "considering" expanding to, or "developing a plan" to expand into. It might be amusing to see the incumbents there scramble to upgrade service or lower prices when Google makes that kind of announcement.

Sorry to be such a pessimist -- I truly want dumb pipes myself -- but any examples today are most likely short-lived. Even municipal broadband will get compromised when politicians understand what they have and budgets get tight (as they always do). Who could resist getting their sticky little fingers on all that data-mining and advertising potential?

Maybe not in the next five years, but before this decade is over the notion of Internet access without some form of traffic-shaping and/or ad-driven subsidy will be as dead as the days of email without spam.

"He acknowledged that rural broadband rollouts and network upgrades are separate tasks. But the latter challenge generates a higher payoff for the economy as a whole, he emphasized."

What kind of payoff would that be? The average user doesn't use that much bandwidth. Businesses can host their stuff out of remote data centers that already have the fat pipes.I suppose it could mean that netflix, hulu, etc., would be able to have more subscribers. I don't see that as something needing government involvement.

Living for years with dial-up while all my friends in town had cable was brutal. And that was before there was such a growing reliance on the internet for things like banking, schoolwork, general communication, etc. I'd hate to see the state of things now. Imagine trying to Skype on a dial-up connection. *shiver*

19m without broadband. 400K will get it "within 3 years"? That is NOT a plan. That is a travasty. This means anyone living in those areas is essentialyl incapable of being brought up properly thrgouh the moden school system withot having to arrange for significant portions of their time to be spent on school property or at other public internet locations instead of at home where they should be. This places numerous businesses in positions of being unable to cepete with neighboring towns, and having no access to certain now-considered essential business services. It means many families can;t even reliably pay bills online or manage accounts (over dial up, my banks own web site takes approx 5 minutes to load just to be abole to log in, due the heavy use of advertizing and hiogh resolution images).

3 years to connect about 5% of those still waiting is not a plan. This is the very prof that we DO need a plan, an actionable one. in 5 years, there should not be a household in america wirthout access to broadband of some kind (with a minimum defined up and downspeed capable of supporting multiple users, and low resolution video streams).

use the USF money to fund one provider per area to build out, but also mandate that 3 years after rollout, the lines have to be deregulated. Give out tons of money. If noone takes it, the local municipality will be expected to build one out on their own (and if not, the federal government itself will build it out). One way or the other, carreirs will be guaranteed to have competition, best it be other commercial entities and not a government that has no requirement for profit, and he who is first to build gets 3 years of exclusivity as a prize before the pipes are opened up. If that's not good enough, the FCC will be comissinoingh instead massive government deployments of dump pipes open to all anyway.

Telephone is deregulated, DIAL UP is deregulated, why the hell isn't cable and internet??? Threaten them with that if they don't jump, and you'll have to walk carefully on roads for fear of being run down by the bustle of telco trucks speeding to their next deployment.

Matt - Why are you only talking to the FCC (ex-FCC) about this? Any input from the Carriers (Telco, Cable, etc?) It's not a conspiraccy why these areas don't have data service, it's not an economic proposition; no company is going to spend money where there are no returns on investment.

Also, this is not Uncle Sam's money, they just set up the rules for the fund. The money for this is coming from the carriers not the government.

We also need to repeal/stop laws that ban locally owned fiber solutions (looking at you, NC and SC!)

+ 1000 internets!

I want to go a step further. Not only prevent such laws, but actually have the FCC itself threaten to build out a national broadband infrastructure OF IT"S OWN, if they don;y build out to rual areas on their own faster. Give them the money, and a 3 years exclusivity clause if they can build out faster than the local mubnicipality can plan one. then at the end of 3 years, they deregulate the pipes either way.

They can compete with open dumb pipes buyit by government money and run without intent of profitiability now, or they can have government money to build out themselves and rake in profits for 3 years before being forced to let their competition (but NOT the government) in.

Thus, the only way to keep from competing with the government directly will be to cave to dumb pipes and speed vs usage billing models.

This is EXACTLY the reason insurance companies were in the end in support of Obamacare. The governement bought their support by taking government run insurance off the table. Buy Telco support by taking governemt run telcos off the table. Simple.

Matt - Why are you only talking to the FCC (ex-FCC) about this? Any input from the Carriers (Telco, Cable, etc?) It's not a conspiraccy why these areas don't have data service, it's not an economic proposition; no company is going to spend money where there are no returns on investment.

Also, this is not Uncle Sam's money, they just set up the rules for the fund. The money for this is coming from the carriers not the government.

That's WHY we're SUBSIDIING those rollouts!!!!!

Take the cost out of the equision and then we're simply left wondering why it isnlt happening. We ran copper to very home in the USA already, telephone. You're telling me it's not possible to do that again? Swap the tax we collect for deploying phone lines to deploying broadband (and give those people VoIP while we're at it), decom the old pots system in 5-10 years, and the telcos won't have to keep blowing money supporting an obsolete industry.

Sorry to be such a pessimist -- I truly want dumb pipes myself -- but any examples today are most likely short-lived. Even municipal broadband will get compromised when politicians understand what they have and budgets get tight (as they always do). Who could resist getting their sticky little fingers on all that data-mining and advertising potential?

Maybe not in the next five years, but before this decade is over the notion of Internet access without some form of traffic-shaping and/or ad-driven subsidy will be as dead as the days of email without spam.

Data Mining and advertizing potential is not the concern or desire for dumb pipes. agnostic connectivity is the reason. If the can be allowed to filter or limit content based on sourse and target, they ISPs can pick winners and losers on the internet. If they can throttle netflix while offering their own service free, or can count netflix bits against your cap without counting their own service, then they're directly impacting unrelated 3rd parties using anticompetitive business practices in a consumer monopoly situation. Once you;re in a contract (as if most of us even have a choice between multiple providers) consumers are not going to pick netflic over inumbants if quality of service or cost are in play, and that is what Comcast is showing the world they are 100% willing to do. Stifling copetition is what we're afraid of.

though some may screan privacy issues on data mining, fine, encrypt your stream then, or pass strict laws on what can and can't be mined without anonimizing all the data, but the real issue with dumb vs filtered pipes is CONTROL. If they;re exerting it unfairly (ewasy to do if you control the pipe for in-contract subscribers), then legitimate businesses suffer and people are forced to make choiced based on unreflected values.

You want to embrace nature, be at one with nature, anti foie gras and concentrate on your arts and spirituality thus living 200 miles from a postal office and you want people to lay that much cable to your door step so that you may or may not use their service?

good luck

I get so tired of hearing this same old bullshit line. They did it with phones years ago. They can do it with Fiber.

Like has been said before, make a $5 per month fee to help subsidize it and get the damn stuff built. AND open up competition. This legal monopoly bullshit for internet access, voice et.al. is just that. Bullshit. It's out dated and impotent.

Water, yes, gas, yes (and natural gas has even been semi opened up to competition), even maybe electricity, but data? No. It might take a 24" water main to supply some parts, or a 24" gas line, but not fiber. And even if you don't want to run more than one line, have a wholesale data supplier that supplies nothing but dumb pipes.

Innovation is totally stifled by the non-existence of competition. Want to fix it? Get COMPETITION in there.

Google may be rolling out 1Gbps Internet access to Kansas City, but there are about 19 million American households and businesses that still lack any access to broadband, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

I have friends that live in "B.F.E." and the local cable companies in their respective areas all recieved funding to extend the cables in the rural areas out to the property lines. No further. Calls to the companies involved, (no matter which state!) resulted in similar responses: The cost to complete the last 300ft. will be about $3,000. But, the technicians are not expected to be available for several years. Independent companies (contractors) are also in limbo: the cable companies tell them the service is actually not available even IF they make the connections. Why pay for a cable that connects to...nothing?1, Collect Federal Money (panties).2, ?3, Profit!